• For a list of known issues with this product, see the Known Issues document under the Documentation section of the page.

  • Data from 13 November 2022 to 26 October 2023 in Version 6 of ATL03, ATL04, and their derived products will be reprocessed to ITRF2014. See the Data Announcement for details.

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Along Track Inland Surface Water Data, Version 6
Data set id:
ATL13
DOI: 10.5067/ATLAS/ATL13.006
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
Changes for Version 6 are as follows:

  • Modified the computations of the deconvolution of subsurface backscatter profile and deconvolution of surface water profile

  • Expanded iteration range of subsurface parameters within deconvolution scheme and added quality flags

  • Added surface quality flags

  • Defined end of partial short segments as the final signal photon

  • To avoid inadvertently capturing subsurface photons associated with bottom reflection and machine error, such photons are further screened and removed from processing using a mirroring approach applied to the water surface

  • Replaced “crossing-number” algorithm with “winding number” algorithm for better determination of ICESat-2 transects within the inland water mask shapes

Overview

This data set (ATL13) contains along-track surface water products for inland water bodies. Inland water bodies include lakes, reservoirs, rivers, bays, estuaries and a 7km near-shore buffer. Principal data products include the along-track water surface height and standard deviation, subsurface signal (532 nm) attenuation, significant wave height, wind speed, and coarse depth to bottom topography (where data permit).
Parameter(s):
ELEVATION
Platform(s):
ICESat-2
Sensor(s):
ATLAS
Data Format(s):
HDF5
Temporal Coverage:
13 October 2018 to present
Temporal Resolution:
  • 91 day
Spatial Resolution:
  • Not Specified
Spatial Reference System(s):
WGS 84
EPSG:4326
Spatial Coverage:
N:
90
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

A free NASA Earthdata Login account is required to access these data. Learn More

Help Articles

General Questions & FAQs

This article covers frequently asked questions about the NASA NSIDC DAAC's Earthdata cloud migration project and what it means to data users.
This short article describes the customization services available for ICESat-2 data using Earthdata Search.

How to Articles

Many NSIDC DAAC data sets can be accessed using the NSIDC DAAC's Data Access Tool. This tool provides the ability to search and filter data with spatial and temporal constraints using a map-based interface.Users have the option to
To convert HDF5 files into binary format you will need to use the h5dump utility, which is part of the HDF5 distribution available from the HDF Group. How you install HDF5 depends on your operating system.
Learn the basic steps for using OpenAltimetry to browse and download ICESat-2 data products.
This guide will provide an overview of the altimetry measurements and data sets across the missions, as well as a guide for accessing the data through NASA Earthdata Search and programmatically using an Application Programming Interface (API).
The NASA Earthdata Cloud is the NASA cloud-based archive of Earth observations. It is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learn how to find and access NSIDC DAAC data directly in the cloud.
All data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) can be accessed directly from our HTTPS file system, using wget or curl. Basic command line instructions are provided in the article below. 
NASA Earthdata Search is a map-based interface where a user can search for Earth science data, filter results based on spatial and temporal constraints, and order data with customizations including re-formatting, re-projecting, and spatial and parameter subsetting.
This webinar introduces the ICESat-2 mission and shows you how to explore, access and customize ICESat-2 data with the OpenAltimetry application, using NSIDC DAAC tools, and shows you how to subset, reformat and analyze the data using Python.